RICKY LEE WELCH v. LAURA PLAPPERT, Warden - Articles

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RICKY LEE WELCH v. LAURA PLAPPERT, Warden

Posted by: Azya Thornton on Mar 11, 2026

Court: 6th Circuit Court (Published Opinions)

Attorneys 1: ARGUED: Kristina Alekseyeva, MILBANK LLP, Washington, D.C., for Petitioner.

Attorneys 2: John H. Heyburn, OFFICE OF THE KENTUCKY ATTORNEY GENERAL, Frankfort, Kentucky, for appellee.

Attorneys 3: ON BRIEF: Kristina Alekseyeva, Neal Kumar Katyal, MILBANK LLP, Washington, D.C., for Petitioner.

Attorneys 4: John H. Heyburn, Matthew F. Kuhn, OFFICE OF THE KENTUCKY ATTORNEY GENERAL, Frankfort, Kentucky, for Appellee.

Judge(s): SUTTON, Chief Judge; STRANCH and LARSEN, Circuit Judges

Court Appealed: United States District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky at Frankfort

SUTTON, Chief Judge. A Kentucky jury found Ricky Lee Welch guilty of several offenses in 2017. He filed a federal habeas corpus petition challenging his conviction in 2023 after exhausting the Kentucky post-conviction process. Federal law imposes a one-year statute of limitations on federal habeas petitions seeking relief from state convictions. That limitations period, however, does not run while a prisoner’s timely application for post-conviction relief is “pending” in state courts. After a state trial court rejected his motion for post-conviction relief, Welch filed a motion for belated appeal six weeks after the 30-day deadline to file a notice of appeal. This apparent untimeliness led the district court to hold that the federal tolling provision did not apply to the time he spent pursuing the state appeal, barring Welch’s federal petition. We disagree because Welch’s appeal fit into a well-established state-law exception to Kentucky’s timeliness rules. Because Welch satisfied this exception, his petition remained “pending” and thus tolled the one-year clock. For this reason and others elaborated below, we reverse the district court’s contrary conclusion.

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